Openly Gay Mayoral Candidate Was Burned, Beaten and Left for Dead

The openly gay mayoral candidate from Clarksdale, Mississippi, USA who was found dead last week was burned and beaten, according to his family.

The Associated Press reports that candidate Marco McMillian’s family received the information from the county coroner. McMillian’s godfather, Carter Womack, told the AP that “the coroner told family members that someone dragged McMillian's body under a fence and left it near a Mississippi River levee last week.”

“We feel that this was not a random act of violence based on the condition of the body when it was found,” McMillian’s campaign said in a statement.

McMillian’s death received national attention because his campaign said he was the first openly gay candidate for public office in the state. As AlterNet's Steven Hsieh noted, "reports characterize McMillan as a rising star with an already impressive record. The candidate served for four years as International Executive Director for the historically black Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity. A  statement released by the fraternity notes that McMillan 'was responsible for securing the first federal contract to raise the awareness of the adverse impact of HIV/AIDS on communities of color.'”

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World's longest running hunger striker charged with trying to commit suicide

Activist Irom Sharmila, a woman from India’s north-east who has been force-fed for the past 12 years, was flown to Delhi so that a judge could charge her with trying to commit suicide. The 40-year-old declined to play along. “I do not want to commit suicide. Mine is only a non-violent protest,” the activist told the judge, according to the Press Trust of India. “It is my demand to live as a human being. I love life. I do not want to take my life but I want justice and peace.”

The activist known as the Iron Lady of Manipur launched her fast in November 2000 to protest over the killing of a group of civilians by paramilitary forces and to demand the repeal of legislation that provides effective immunity to soldiers. Since then she has refused to eat, drink or even brush her teeth with water.

Refusing to end her fast until the so-called Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) is withdrawn from all of Manipur, she has been repeatedly detained and fed twice a day by a tube attached to her nose. In 2006, she brought her protest to Delhi where she was arrested by police and charged under section 309 of the Indian penal code; the slow nature of the system means her case is only now reaching court.

More on The Independent

The Pirate Bay via North-Korea

The Pirate Bay has been hunted in many countries around the world. Not for illegal activities but being persecuted for beliefs of freedom of information. Today, a new chapter is written in the history of the movement, as well as the history of the internets.

A week ago we could reveal that The Pirate Bay was accessed via Norway and Catalonya. The move was to ensure that these countries and regions will get attention to the issues at hand. Today we can reveal that we have been invited by the leader of the republic of Korea, to fight our battles from their network.

This is truly an ironic situation. We have been fighting for a free world, and our opponents are mostly huge corporations from the United States of America, a place where freedom and freedom of speech is said to be held high. At the same time, companies from that country is chasing a competitor from other countries, bribing police and lawmakers, threatening political parties and physically hunting people from our crew. And to our help comes a government famous in our part of the world for locking people up for their thoughts and forbidding access to information.

We believe that being offered our virtual asylum in Korea is a first step of this country's changing view of access to information. It's a country opening up and one thing is sure, they do not care about threats like others do. In that way, TPB and Korea might have a special bond. We will do our best to influence the Korean leaders to also let their own population use our service, and to make sure that we can help improve the situation in any way we can. When someone is reaching out to make things better, it's also ones duty to grab their hand.

The Pirate Bay Blog

Catholic Archbishop Admits Biblical Morality Fraud

China defends growing military spending

China has defended its booming military spending saying vast investments in the armed forces have contributed to global peace and stability, despite concerns among the US and Beijing's Asian neighbours over sharpening territorial disputes.

However, in a break with previous years, no figure for this year's defence budget was presented on the eve of the annual legislative session which will see new leaders placed into top government positions after they were elevated at November's Communist Party congress. Speaking at a news conference on Monday, Fu Ying, a spokeswoman for the National People's Congress, said the figure would appear in the overall budget to be released Tuesday.

On the same day, party leader Xi Jinping will take over from Hu Jintao as president, as well as head of the government's Central Military Commission, as part of China's once-a-decade power transition. In addition, the session approves top cabinet appointments such as the defence minister.

China's defence spending has grown substantially each year for more than two decades, last year rising 11.2 percent to $106.4bn, an increase of about $10.7bn. Only the US spends more on defence.

More on Al Jazeera English (with video)

The Atheist Experience

The Atheist Experience is an american weekly, live, call in talk show discussing issues related to Atheism.

For more info visit their websites at: atheist-experience.com and atheist-community.org

Hear My Train A Comin' Jam

Jimi Hendrix, live from the Royal Albert Hall, February 24, 1969. This video was originally recorded during the tour for the possibility of release in vain of his Monterey Pop Festival movie, though not much work was done afterwards (hence the somewhat shotty quality), and was only released to the public via bootlegs.

British Defence Secretary wants to cut benefits, not troops

British Defence Secretary Philip Hammond has warned he will resist further cuts to the armed forces in Chancellor George Osborne's forthcoming spending review.

In an interview with The Daily Telegraph, he said other Conservative Cabinet ministers believed that the greatest burden of any cuts should fall on the welfare budget. There was, he said, a “body of opinion within Cabinet who believes that we have to look at the welfare budget again”, and that “we should be seeing welfare spending falling” as a result of rising employment levels.

More on The Independent

Mother Teresa anything but a saint

A study conducted by Canadian researchers has called Mother Teresa "anything but a saint", a creation of an orchestrated and effective media campaign who was generous with her prayers but miserly with her foundation's millions when it came to humanity's suffering.

The controversial study, to be published this month in the journal of studies in religion/sciences called Religieuses, says that Teresa — known across the world as the apostle of the dying and the downtrodden — actually felt it was beautiful to see the poor suffer.

According to the study, the Vatican overlooked the crucial human side of Teresa — her dubious way of caring for the sick by glorifying their suffering instead of relieving it.

Instead, the Vatican went ahead with her beatification followed by canonization "to revitalize the Church and inspire the faithful especially at a time when churches are empty and the Roman authority is in decline".

Researchers Serge Larivee and Genevieve Chenard from the University of Montreal's department of psychoeducation, and Carole Senechal of the University of Ottawa's faculty of education, analysed published writings about Mother Teresa and concluded that her hallowed image, "which does not stand up to analysis of the facts, was constructed, and that her beatification was orchestrated by an effective media campaign".

According to Larivee, facts debunk Teresa's myth. He says that the Vatican, before deciding on Teresa's beatification, did not take into account "her rather dubious way of caring for the sick, her questionable political contacts, her suspicious management of the enormous sums of money she received, and her overly dogmatic views regarding ... abortion, contraception, and divorce."

At the time of her death, Teresa had 517 missions or "homes for the dying" as described by doctors visiting several of these establishments in Kolkata. They welcomed the poor and sick in more than 100 countries. Two-thirds of the people coming to these missions hoped to a find a doctor to treat them, while the other third lay dying without receiving apt care.

More on The Times of India

The Natural World

CYMBALS

Americans had a right to know 'true cost of war'

Bradley Manning, the soldier accused of the biggest unauthorised disclosure of state secrets in US history, has pleaded guilty to being the source of the leak, telling a military court that he passed the information to a whistleblowing website because he believed the American people had a right to know the "true costs of war".

At a pre-trial hearing on a Maryland military base, Manning, 25, who faces spending the rest of his life in military custody, read out a 35-page statement in which he gave an impassioned account of his motives for transmitting classified documents and videos he had obtained while working as an intelligence analyst outside Baghdad.

Manning said: "We were obsessed with capturing and killing human targets on lists and ignoring goals and missions. I believed if the public, particularly the American public, could see this it could spark a debate on the military and our foreign policy in general [that] might cause society to reconsider the need to engage in counter-terrorism while ignoring the human situation of the people we engaged with every day."

More on The Guardian

Supremacy

Muse

Circle

Eddie Izzard, New York City, 26 June 2000.

After 40 Years in Solitary, Prisoner Ordered Freed for 3rd Time in Louisiana

A federal judge has once again ordered the state of Louisiana to release Albert Woodfox, a former Black Panther who has spent more than 40 years in solitary confinement. Woodfox and Herman Wallace, another prisoner of the "Angola 3," were convicted of murdering a guard at Angola Prison. The Angola 3 and their supporters say they were framed for their political activism. On Tuesday, the same federal judge that ordered Woodfox’s release in 2008 again ruled Woodfox should be set free on the basis of racial discrimination in his retrial. It was the third time Woodfox’s conviction has been overturned, but prosecutors successfully reversed the two previous victories. The state is expected to appeal once again to keep Woodfox behind bars.

Democracy Now!

Farewell

Part 1

Demon Days Live

Gorillaz – Demon Days: Live at the Manchester Opera House is a Grammy Award nominated live DVD. It compiles the live performances from 1 November–5 November 2005 (Wikipedia)

Hero Stéphane Hessel has died

Stéphane Frédéric Hessel (20 October 1917 – 26 February 2013) was a diplomat, ambassador, writer, concentration camp survivor, French Resistance fighter and BCRA agent. Born German, he became a naturalised French citizen in 1939. He participated in the editing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948. In 2011, he was named by Foreign Policy magazine to its list of top global thinkers.

In October 2010, his essay, Time for Outrage! (original French title: Indignez-vous!), was published in an edition of 6,000 copies (ISBN 978-1455509720). It has sold more than 3.5 million copies worldwide and has been translated into Swedish, Danish, Basque, Catalan, Italian, German.Greek, Portuguese, Slovenian, Spanish, Croatian, Hebrew, Korean, and Dutch. Translations into Japanese, Hungarian, and other languages are planned. In the United States, The Nation magazine's March 7–14, 2011 issue published the entire essay in English.

Hessel's booklet argues that the French need to again become outraged, as were those who participated in the Resistance during World War II. Hessel's reasons for personal outrage include the growing gap between the very rich and the very poor, France's treatment of its illegal immigrants, the need to re-establish a free press, the need to protect the environment, importance of protecting the French welfare system, and the plight of Palestinians, recommending that people read the September 2009 Goldstone Report. He calls for peaceful and non-violent insurrection.

In 2011, one of the names given to the Spanish protests against corruption and bipartisan politics was Los Indignados (The Outraged), taken from the title of the book's translation there (¡Indignaos!). These protests, in conjunction with the Arab Spring, later helped to inspire other protests in many countries, including Greece, UK, Chile, Israel, and Occupy Wall Street which began in New York's financial district, but has now spread across the United States and numerous other countries. Ongoing protests in Mexico challenging corruption, drug cartel violence, economic hardship and policies also have been called the Indignados.

Wikipedia – Al Jazeera – NY Times – The Star

Unidentified Flying Creatures

Fox News Update

Keith Ellison explodes on-air at Sean Hannity

DoYaThing

Gorillaz

The Vatican and homosexuality

Robin Williams

US trains Terrorists

The Department of Energy has a National Security Site in Nevada, that is around sixty-five miles northwest of Las Vegas, has the look of northwest Iran with high plains and remote mountain peaks. The site was once used for nuclear testing and now includes a counterintelligence training facility. It is a restricted area, and inhospitable–sites security personal are authorized to use deadly force against any intruders.

Starting in 2005 the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) started conducting training for members of the Mujahideen-e-Khalq, a dissident Iranian opposition group known in the West as the M.E.K. The M.E.K was once linked to the killing of six Americans and in 1997 was listed as a foreign terrorist organization by the State Department. In 2002, the M.E.K earned some international credibility back by publicly revealing that Iran had begun enriching uranium at a secret location. After the fall of the Iraqi regime in 2003, the M.E.K’s ties with the Western intelligence deepened and JSOC began operating inside Iran in an effort to substantiate the Bush Administration’s fears that Iran was building the bomb at one or more secret underground locations.

More on The Media Freedom Foundation

More Than 50 Countries Collaborated With CIA On Torture Program

Torturing: it brought the United States together with Iran, Syria, Libya, and Zimbabwe. Wired reports:

A new report from the Open Society Foundation details the CIA’s effort to outsource torture since 9/11. Known as “extraordinary rendition,” the practice concerns taking detainees to and from U.S. custody without a legal process and handing detainees over to countries that practiced torture.

The report found that 136 people went through the post-9/11 extraordinary rendition, and 54 countries were complicit in it. Some were official U.S. adversaries, like Iran and Syria, brought together with the CIA by the shared interest of combating terrorism.

The most famous case involves Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen snatched in 2002 by the U.S. at JFK Airport before the CIA sent him to Syria under the mistaken impression he was a terrorist. In Syrian custody, Arar was “imprisoned for more than ten months in a tiny grave-like cell, beaten with cables, and threatened with electric shocks by the Syrian government.”

The full 54 countries that aided in post-9/11 renditions: Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Belgium, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Canada, Croatia, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Djibouti, Egypt, Ethiopia, Finland, Gambia, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Iceland, Indonesia, Iran, Ireland, Italy, Jordan, Kenya, Libya, Lithuania, Macedonia, Malawi, Malaysia, Mauritania, Morocco, Pakistan, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, South Africa, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Syria, Thailand, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, Uzbekistan, Yemen, and Zimbabwe.

Disinformation

The Pakistani Ambassador to the U.S. to be investigated for blasphemy

Sherry Rehman, the Pakistani Ambassador to the United States, is under investigation by Pakistani police for allegedly blasphemous remarks she made more than two years ago on a Pakistani talk show, Agence France-Press reports. If convicted, Rehman could be sentenced to death. A senior police official confirmed to AFP on Tuesday that authorities had begun investigating Rehman on orders from the Pakistani Supreme Court.

According to CBS, the case is a response to a 31-year-old Pakistani businessman's complaint to authorities, in which he singled out Rehman for remarks she made during a Nov. 30, 2010, appearance on Dunya TV news program “Dunya Meray Aagay.” Rehman's contentious statements were made during a discussion about Aasia Bibi, an impoverished Pakistani Christian woman who had been sentenced to death a few weeks earlier for allegedly insulting the Prophet Muhammed.

In Pakistan, anyone who insults the Prophet (even indirectly or implicitly) can be given a death sentence or life imprisonment. Recently, a 14-year-old girl named Rimsha Masih was arrested and jailed for allegedly burning pages from the Quran. She was later freed after a Muslim cleric was accused of framing her. Over 1,200 people have been charged with blasphemy in Pakistan since the harsh law was enacted in 1986, according to English-language Pakistani newspaper Dawn. Critics of the measure say the law is often used to persecute religious minorities or settle personal vendettas. While there have been no verified reports of anyone being officially executed, angry lynch mobs have reportedly bypassed the judicial system and carried out the executions themselves.

More on Huffington Post

Genocide in Canada by Church & State - Verdict and Sentence

The final Verdict and Sentence of the International Common Law Court of Justice, in the Case of Genocide in Canada by Church and State - Includes the Court Order issued to the Defendants - Issued February 25, 2013

itccs.org